Why you shouldnât ask a person of colour âwhere they are fromâ
By Roshni Riar, Staff Writer
âHey, where are you from?â an ignorant yet curious stranger asks me.
I respond as I always do, saying, âThompson, Manitoba.â
âNo, but reallyâŚâ is the reply Iâm faced with.
âYeah, really,â I confirm my initial answer, awaiting inevitable confusion.
At least once a week, I find myself in a situation like the one Iâve just played out above. I have to admit, it is pretty amusing to see the panic in the askerâs eye when they donât know how to process what Iâve just told them. Not expecting such a plain, meat-and-potatoes backstory, the reaction that I often get is a set of quizzical eyes scanning my face, lingering on my brown skin, trying to place my apparently âracially ambiguousâ features.
Asking a person of colour where theyâre from is insensitive for a number of reasons. Itâs incredibly assumptive to think that the person being asked even knows âwhere theyâre from,â in the context of how that question is generally framed.
What if they donât know? Will they still be challenged then, just because itâs hard to comprehend a person of colour not knowing the history behind their skin? What about someone who grew up in foster care, or whose family has someone adopted inâwill their answers not prove sufficient? Is unearthing some kind of unresolved trauma or conflict worth quelling someone elseâs curiosity? I certainly donât think so, and whatâs worse is that people often donât even consider these critical and valid concerns when broaching the topic.
Itâs even harder to handle these kinds of interactions when the inquiring party comes into the conversation with a preconceived idea of the response theyâre going to get, expecting nothing less than an exotic tale of a faraway land where monkeys work cash registers and everyone rides an elephant to school. Your race shouldnât need to live up to someone elseâs expectation. Itâs okay to challenge a stereotype. In fact, I encourage it. Iâm never sorry to disappoint others with my Manitoban origin story.
Iâas well as many other people of colourâwas born somewhere that isnât where my race originates from. Shocking, I know. Thompson is my hometown, and I identify with it because I spent half my life there. That is where Iâm from, yet my answer is something that people have a hard time understanding. People think Iâm joking or trying to be smart when I tell them Iâm from Manitoba. They laugh too loudly, then look at me expectantly, waiting for the nostalgic storytelling to begin. My skin colour shouldnât automatically predetermine where I might consider my home, and while my answer shouldnât need to prove that, it does.
More than anything, I often wonder why the question is even asked of people of colour. What benefit does it serve the person asking? Will the answer change anything? If it does, does that make them racist? Itâs hard to say, but the implicit racism that fuels this type of inquiry is undeniable. Itâs only ever asked of people of colour, and their answers are never good enough if they donât meet a pre-set quota of foreignness.
Some people will go out of their way to prove their race, which they shouldnât need to do. Others like myself will try to avoid the topic altogether, which can come off as detached. It feels like people of colour canât just be; they have to reject their race if theyâre told itâs not good enough or lean into it with everything theyâve got, creating a suitable caricature for those around them.
âWhere are you from?â It isnât anyoneâs business. If I donât want to provide you with a full breakdown of my racial identity, then I wonât. I shouldnât need to give you details because itâs my identity being examined.
âBut what if the person Iâm talking to wants to share their background?â You know how youâll know if they want to share? Theyâll actually go ahead and tell you, rather than waiting for you to pry.
